Leopard frogs are stubborn!

Sorry for the incredibly long delay in posting.  After blogging about doing ecotox studies on amphibians the ecotox project we were trying to get started kind of took over our lives.  Thought I'd explain today how some of the best laid plans can still completely backfire.  Our goal was to set up an enormous study on southern leopard frogs.  We would have experiments in the field (the H02 constructed wetlands), nearly 400 tadpoles being reared in the lab, and 42 outdoor mesocosms too.  It's incredibly ambitious, but also a pretty cool study.  Anyway, to make this work it was critical to be able to pair a male and female together, get them to breed, and collect some of their eggs for the study.  We needed several pairs from two different locations to breed and they needed to all breed on the same night so we could start the experiments at the same time.  With many species this isn't so hard.  With leopard frogs it is a royal pain in the arse.  We knew from experience that leopard frogs could be a bit stubborn so this year we tried setting up 20 bins (each with a pair) right on the banks of one wetland where they could hear the large chorus of calling male frogs to get in the mood.  This was a pretty big undertaking, measured all of our frogs, injected them with some hormones to enhance the chance of egg laying, and got them into pairs.  then we lugged 4 50L carboys of "lab water" down to Ellenton bay, filled the bins, put the pairs in, carried them to the bank, duct taped and bungee corded the lids down to prevent raccoon predation, covered them with shade cloth and hoped for the best (the bins are pictured here).  Well, the next morning we got skunked: 0 for 20.  Gave them another night and got skunked again.  Had to make an on the fly decision and we decided to punt on the main plan, grab some fresh egg masses from the wetland at large, do a small scale study on the leopard frogs and regroup for the southern toad season.  We finished the leopard frog egg study and now we are just waiting for a big toad movement.  We've had a couple of rainy nights but so far the toads are holding out--not sure what they are waiting for, but we hope they behave better.  They usually do---I guess they aren't so finicky about their mating partners!  So, things are hopefully returning to normal and blog posts will be more regular again!